After the last race in Texas I felt good for my 2nd race in NEPG. So I was really looking forward to this race. My girlfriend and I arrived at the Minneapolis Airport at 12:35 and we started to look for Dylan Debel that should come and pick us up. We saw him at a screen were he was looking for our flight. We scared him a little bit =)
Dylan did take us to Americas biggest mall, The Mall of America. It was huge and it was fun to see all things. It was so big that we didn’t find our car at first. After that we went to Dylan’s home and eat dinner. After that it was bed time. We woke up on Friday and started with a bicycle ride. Dylan showed us around and it was very similar to Sweden. After lunch I borrowed one of Dylan’s bikes and we rode on his Enduro track and on one supercross track. It was awesome!!!

We went to bed early on Friday because we should get up early and start our travel to Marquette. We had about 6,5 hours drive to Marquette. I started to test my bike and it felt very good. We changed the fork settings and then it was ready for race. We saw some parts of the track and it looked real nice and very fast like we have in Sweden. After the testing it was time for the enter the race and I got the number 20, the same row as William Burns, which was a good feeling.

Sunday morning and it was time for the race. I started real well and the fast parts were really good. Then we went into the woods and it started to get very tight and I mean very tight!! But I fought my way through the stage with one crash. I think I passed around 25 guys so it was very hard to get a good time.

The second stage was really fun and wasn’t so tight and it felt good, but then I jumped over a fallen tree and I crashed. Lost a lot of time and started to push again. I liked that section. Then the hard part of the race started. The 3rd stage was very, very and very tight. I struggled a lot. In Sweden we don’t have that tight sections at all. Now I understand why the Americans use bark busters. So for the next round I will use bark busters.

After the half point we change the rear brake fluid because I lost the brake now and then. The whole last part of the race was very tight and I struggled a lot. But I learned more and more the whole race. I was very angry after the race because I wasn’t satisfied with the race. I had high expectation on my self but I had too many problems and I didn’t ride well in the tight sections. I learned and now I will train on the tight sections at home. I also will put bark busters on my bike to get used to it and come back and please myself. The bike felt good and we had some small problems, we had a small problem with the rear brake that we solved.

The day after the race we spend on the Mall of America, it is cheap in US =).  I must thank all that have helped me and hopefully I will do much better the next time. Thanks to the Debel family, Klim, Ariete, GasGas, Gofasters, Offroadchampions.com, Michelin and all other sponsors and of course my family!

Hopefully I can come back for the race in Blain, PA. I am looking forward to it already!

Best Regards

Tobias Burman